Regardless of which political party gains ground in an important German state election this weekend, Germany itself is already emerging as a loser from the
populist politics surrounding the poll. The ruling coalition of Gerhard Schroder, the chancellor, faces a crucial test in North Rhine-Westphalia this
Sunday. Mr Schroder&#8242;s Social Democrats have governed the key industrial state for 39 years and an electoral defeat there - which seems likely, according to polls - will be seen as a rejection of the government&#8242;s reform agenda.

That is the least of it. For the second time in three years, Mr Schroder&#8242;s party has cultivated for short-term electoral gains a crude and dangerous debate about the country&#8242;s fundamental orientation. The first time Mr Schroder did this was in the run-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, when he reached for the anti-American card. It helped him win national elections. But it was startling to see how quickly political tactics turned to passion and spiralled out of control. One of Mr Schroder&#8242;s cabinet ministers compared the US president to Adolf Hitler. A leading Social Democratic parliamentarian said the US ambassador in Berlin was no different from a Soviet ambassador. Still another official insisted that the US was trying to impose its own "Brezhnev doctrine" on Europe.

Worst of all, such demagoguery found resonance with the German public. A writer for Der Spiegel told me to ignore the anti-American covers the magazine was running at the time - editors were just trying to connect with their 1m readers, he explained. In truth, after that election, the German public would have needed a concerted education campaign about why the transatlantic relationship should matter at all. Alas, such a campaign never took place and the twin viruses of anti-Americanism and national-pacifism that Mr Schroder helped stir still fester in the German body politic.

Similarly, Germany today needs an honest national discussion after its recent capitalism debate. But, sadly, Mr Schroder&#8242;s SPD has again tapped into populist sentiment. One sees young people in Berlin wearing T-shirts reading, "abolish capitalism". The particular bogeyman this time is foreign, especially US investors. A German trade union magazine with a readership of 2m recently portrayed an insect, holding a US stars-and-stripes hat, with the headline, "US Companies in Germany: Bloodsuckers". All this was set off by Franz Muntefering, the SPD&#8242;s chairman, who stoked anti-capitalist passions with his jibe that foreign hedge funds and other investors were like "locusts" feeding off vulnerable German workers. Like the rantings of US film-maker Michael Moore, this sort of thing sells well in mainstream German society, and 70 per cent of the country responded positively to the SPD&#8242;s message.

Of course, the anti-capitalist card may be just another populist political tactic. Perhaps it will even help the SPD at the polls this weekend. But in the
meantime it has other short-term, negative effects. In truth, Mr Schroder has
pushed the German economy toward reforms, however modest, that would have been unimaginable under his predecessor, Helmut Kohl, the Christian Democratic chancellor. Mr Schroder himself is a pragmatist with a generally pro-business view. But now the SPD&#8242;s left wing is seizing the opportunity to force the government into discussions about new regulations on foreign capital. That would be bad enough. Fifteen years after the fall of the
Berlin Wall, Germany battles with 12 per cent unemployment and anaemic growth, and has not even begun to cope with its demographic crisis.

There is a still bigger concern. Once again the country&#8242;s political leadership has validated dangerous popular prejudices, this time about the modern global economy and the inherent challenges for Germany. Who will remind the
Germans that their postwar system was always capitalist; that markets created their prosperity; that Ludwig Erhard, father of their "social market economy", once said: "The freer the economy, the more social it can be"? Without clear and principled leadership, the economy is in danger of becoming increasingly less of both.

Lack of leadership on these issues has created a vacuum. Some are starting to rewrite history - as evident in German media, politics and in schools. America&#8242;s positive role as a partner of the Federal Republic is being airbrushed out. In the current environment, conspiracy theories flourish. A recent national opinion poll found that one out of five Germans believes the CIA was behind the September 11 2001 attacks on America. As for the debate about capitalism, while all industrialised societies need to consider the ethics of capitalism and social responsibility, primitive caricatures, polarising class warfare and romanticised debates about German moral superiority in foreign and economic policy take us somewhere no reasonable person wants to be.

The leftist press and television in Germany has stoked the fires of anti-Americanism. The SPD runs on anti-American rhetoric and socialist fairy tales. For years, the SPD has purchased German elections with socialist promises that has made the economy weak and uncompetitive. Perhaps Germans would have preferred that America had lost the Cold War. Maybe Germans yearned for the military and economic benefits of the Warsaw Pact. Current German attitudes must mean that America wasted its time spending hundreds of billions of dollars across more than fifty years protecting Deutschland from the CCCP. Germans are upset about GM owning that loser Opel? Too bad. Opel would have long been belly-up if not for GM. Should Americans take the German attitude and moan about MB owning Chrysler?

Question Number One:
Which German administration in the last century dealt this heavily in conspiracy theories, came to power under these current unemployment conditions, hated America vehemently, and was characterized by rising levels of anti-semitism, not unlike today?

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